mónica hernández: change from the bottom up

8/7/2019 Mónica Hernández: Change from the Bottom up

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Race, Poverty & the Environment | Fall 2007

Organizing as Educating

When I first got to Highlander, we had a programdesigned to support the formation of grassrootsLatino immigrant organizations in the South. It wasimportant because it gave people the opportunity togather periodically and break their isolation, bothgeographical and psychological. Immigrant commu-nities in the rural areas of the South sometimes face ahostile reception from neighbors who are dealingwith a growing immigrant population for the firsttime. The opportunity for these immigrants to realizethey’re not alone is critical.

When immigrants are starting out with no infra-structure and no other organizations supporting them,there is a tendency to try to address the entire range of needs of the community. People see immediate needs,so they try to form a Hispanic or Latino communitycenter. People are working under tremendous pressure,with no opportunity to take a more strategic view of what’s needed. So there’s not a lot of communityorganizing in those initial stages. They are surviving

in the service provision model, which is necessary, butlimited in its potential for change.

Redefining LeadershipThe Immigrant Leadership Development Institute

(Instituto para el Desarollo de Liderazgo, INDELI)really provided people with a different model for

leadership. When people hear, “This person’s aleader,” they tend to think of the individual, charis-matic, boss-type leader. But we were offering leader-ship trainings focusing on collaboration, with theidea that anybody can be a leader. Another aspect of INDELI was to give people concrete organizing andorganizational skills—how to facilitate a meeting,how to recruit people, how to assess the needs of yourcommunity.

The third component was political educationfocused on bringing in an anti-oppression framework,so people could see their struggles connecting withother people’s struggles. Particularly here in theSouth, immigrants should know more about thestruggles and history of the African-American com-munity. Political education also looked at the frame-work and particulars of the debate on immigration.

The demographic shift in the South has been dif-ferent in different states. Georgia and North Carolinahave had Latino communities for more than 15 years

and have had a chance to build organizations. Otherplaces—Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi—are juststarting to see the immigrant influx as a visible, pal-pable presence. So the varying development of theimmigrant community has implications for wherethey are organizationally. We felt that leaders had thepotential to transform how organizing was

Mónica Hernández: Change fromthe Bottom up

hotos: Participants ate 3rd National

mmigrant and Refugeeights Training

nstitute.

© 2006 NNIRR

Continued on page 49



Race, Poverty & the Environment | Fall 2007

HernándezContinued from page 48

approached and to spur more organizing. Part of it

was helping communities figure out why organizingas a strategy was important and why it was crucial tobuild people’s organizing skills. We realized that wehad to be flexible and open to some of the people whodid not yet have a full political framework, but didhave a sense of their work being connected to socialjustice—whether or not they were actually organizingat that point.

Providing a Framework for ChangeWe had a clear sense of what we wanted to do:

form small organizing committees in communities to

teach people how to do “know your rights” workshopsand use that as a tool to organize people. Folksweren’t ready for that. A lot of folks came back andused the “know your rights” workshop that we had,but it was on their timeline, not ours. That’s part of what makes it popular education—you have yourmethodology and plan, and it can go out the window.

That’s why we had such a heavy emphasis on polit-ical education and skills-building. We provided aframework so that people would start changing theway they thought about what they were doing.Instead of just being focused on one particular cam-paign, they could see how it fit into a broader effortto do movement-building. I believe that’s the onlyway change is going to happen—from the bottom up.Popular education is a key part of that process.

Through my work, I have become more and moreconvinced that movements need to be led by thepeople most affected. The way to do that is not to justgo in and say, “This is what you’re going to do.” Youneed to start from where people are, and honor theirexperiences. Immigrants and poor people in generalare always being told that their knowledge and expe-riences don’t matter. Folks have a lot of self-esteemissues because the education system has failed them,

and they believe it’s their fault—they think they’restupid and dumb and ignorant.Transformation happens within people. In many

cases, immigrant women come in feeling like they’re

worth nothing. They’re afraid to talk and to partici-pate in a public hearing or a protest; they’re afraid justbeing out there. The fact is that their vulnerability as

undocumented immigrants really hasn’t changed—if anything, it’s gotten worse. But they become strongerand stronger as they participate and become leadersand support other women to become leaders. ■

Mónica Hernández is the lead person on Highlander’s Pueblos de Latinoamérica project, which seeks to develop Latino grassroots lead-

ership and organizations in the Southeast. She is also chair of the board of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

A native of Mexico, Mónica joined the Highlander staff after working 13 years at the Northern California Coalition

for Immigration Rights in San Francisco.

■

Photos: Participanthe 3rd NationalImmigrant and ReRights TrainingInstitute.

© 2006 NNIRR



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